It has become apparent in modern times that, on average, communities are becoming increasingly unsafe. As community safety declines, so, too, does individual safety. This is borne out by national statistics showing that home invasion and breaking-and-entering type crimes are increasing at alarming rates, especially in large cities.
For example, current statistics demonstrate that one of every five homes will experience a break-in or violent home invasion. Up to eighty percent of break-ins occur forcibly through a locked door. Over seventy percent of burglaries occur while families are at home. Thirty-eight percent of assaults, and sixty percent of rapes, occur during home invasions. These are sobering statistics, indeed.
In many ways, breaking-and-entering crimes are among the most humiliating, intrusive, costly, and affronting. Home invasion crimes, on the other hand, wherein an intruder will kick-in the front door of a home with the intent to take hostages, injure family members, and commit criminal acts against persons and property, are heinous and devastating. Most haunting are statistics that home invasion crimes are most frequently committed during daytime hours, at times when the individual or family least expects such an attack and may be least prepared to defend against one.
As such crimes increase, individuals and families grow ever more concerned about their personal safety, and the safety of their homes and possessions. Regardless of whether one is home or away at the time of commission of the crime, no one wants to confront a forced entry into their personal and private space. Further, it is especially true that no-one wants to be the victim of a home invasion.
Similar concerns may sometimes arise with regard to some types of office and commercial properties. These are easy, and sometimes frequent, targets due to the number of nighttime and, often, weekend hours that such properties are left unattended. Other factors, such as the relative solitude of a business within a commercial district after business hours, may also provide increased opportunity for commission of a forced entry crime.
Of even greater concern is that an employee may be on-premises, conducting authorized after-hours business, at the time a forced entry crime is being committed. Not only are business owners concerned for their personal safety, and the safety of their employees and patrons, but they are also concerned about the significant economic liabilities that can arise in the nature of legal claims against the business, brought by persons who were on-premises at the time of the forced entry crime.
Although of lesser significance when compared to the above-described concerns, regardless of whether the subject property is a home or business, a forced entry crime inevitably results in significant property damage at the point of entry, and often within the property itself, which subsequently requires costly repairs. Furthermore, in circumstances wherein there is property damage, property loss, and/or personal injuries that result from a forced entry crime, insurance claims are often brought. As a consequence, individual and aggregate premiums rise due to increased policy holder payouts and increasing insurable risk.
As a result of the above-described concerns and considerations, individuals, families, businesses, and insurers will go to great lengths to prevent an unlawful, unwanted entry. Most often, in order to prevent a forced entry, one or more locks are installed upon or within an outward facing, barrier door and its casing. Such locks may take the form of simple locks, bolt-type locks, door-to-casing pins, bars, high security locks, chains, or the like. Even though one or more such locks may be correctly installed, functional, and in-use, a forced entry may still be committed.
For example, doors may be kicked-in, knocked-in, or pried open; the locks forced, the chains cut. Additionally, and most prevalent with regard to residential doors, the door hinges may fail under an outside impact-type assault on the door, providing an unintended opening opposite the otherwise locked side. Most frequently, the door frame itself will fail from an outside impact, splintering and separating from the deadbolt, and allowing entry.
Although one or more alarms may be installed and activated, they provide little to no actual, physical protection against a forced entry. While an alarm may serve as a potential deterrent, law enforcement response times may not be sufficient to ensure safety of person and property. Additionally, alarms that are not remotely monitored by an owner or third-party service provider often go unnoticed, unheeded, and unreported; thereby, reducing or obviating any possible deterrent effect.
Thus, it is only by keeping unwanted persons out of a private space by actually preventing their physical entry, that personal safety, and the safety of property within, truly may be ensured.
Against the backdrop described above, it would be desirable, therefore, to provide a practically impenetrable security door brace and cooperating mounting plate system that prevents inward opening of a barrier door, and to related methods of use. It would be preferable for such a system to be relatively inexpensive, yet effective and easy to use; thereby, encouraging use of the system in order to obtain a desirable result and benefit in the form of increased safety and security against unwanted, forced entry. Accordingly, it is to these purposes that the present disclosure is directed.